Choosing Your OTA Mix: A Tour Operator's Guide to Viator, GetYourGuide and Direct
Each booking channel has a role. OTAs reach travellers you cannot reach alone. Direct keeps the relationship. This is a clear-headed look at when each channel is the right one to lean on.
A tour operator we work with described their channel mix as "Viator, GetYourGuide, and whatever I can manage in the time left over." That mirrors what we hear from a lot of small and mid-sized operators in 2026. Choosing which platforms to lean on, and how hard, is one of the most consequential commercial decisions you make each season.
This guide is not a comparison of who is better than whom. Viator and GetYourGuide are both substantial businesses with millions of travellers and large supplier teams. They each do real, valuable work for tour operators. The honest question for an operator is not which is best, but what role each channel plays in your business this season. That is what we'll walk through.
Three roles a channel can play
Every booking channel — OTA, direct, hotel partner, walk-up — does one or more of three jobs:
- Discovery — surfacing your tour to a traveller who has never heard of you.
- Trust transfer — lending a brand the traveller already trusts to your offer.
- Conversion — turning interest into a confirmed seat.
Large OTAs are unusually strong at discovery and trust transfer. They host a global traveller audience and have spent years earning reviewer and refund-policy trust. Your direct channel is unusually strong at conversion — once a traveller is on your site, they are essentially pre-qualified.
A healthy mix uses each channel for its strongest job.
The honest case for keeping the OTAs you have
Almost every operator we work with — including those running Tourist Scan — keeps at least one OTA listing. The reason is straightforward: a traveller searching from their hotel room at 10pm is hard to reach any other way. An OTA is a paid discovery channel. Paying commission is paying for that discovery.
Where things get interesting is the incremental question. Of the bookings you receive through any given OTA, how many would have found you anyway? That number is rarely close to the headline booking count. The honest test, when you have the courage, is to pause a single listing for two weeks and watch total bookings. If they stay flat, you have your answer.
Channels worth paying attention to in 2026
Each of the major OTAs has a different shape. We won't quote specific commission terms or fees — those change, and platforms negotiate them per supplier. The official partner portals are the right place to confirm current rates:
- Viator — strong global reach, particularly for English-speaking inbound. Tightly integrated with TripAdvisor. Best when most of your travellers discover you through reviews. viator.com/supplier.
- GetYourGuide — strong European traveller mindshare and an excellent mobile experience. Best when your guests skew European and value visual storytelling.supply.getyourguide.support.
- Klook — well placed for travellers from East Asia and Asia-Pacific. Best when you have audiences from those markets.klook.com/partner.
- TripAdvisor Experiences — surfaces alongside reviews, distributed via Viator's network.
- Airbnb Experiences — a niche channel that can be a strong fit for host-led, story-driven experiences.
Each platform's economics, contract terms, and ranking algorithm change periodically. The most reliable source is the platform's own current partner documentation.
Why your direct channel matters even when OTAs work
Direct bookings are not better than OTA bookings because the OTAs are bad. They are valuable because they sit at a different point in the customer's life. A direct booking usually means the traveller has met you, heard about you from a friend, or seen you in person. The relationship is yours. You can speak to them again.
That second conversation is where Tourist Scan tends to earn its keep. The traveller scanned your poster at the meeting point and saved your card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet for the rest of their trip. When they have a free Wednesday afternoon, they see your card on the lock screen. They book direct. No commission on that second booking. That is the structural reason a healthy operator mix is OTAs plus direct, not OTAs alone.
A simple framework for which channels to keep
Once a quarter, sit with the channel-by-channel report and ask three questions per channel:
- What does this channel do well that I cannot replicate cheaply? If the honest answer is "nothing I am not getting elsewhere," consider quietly pausing.
- What is the share of bookings from this channel that are truly incremental? Bookings that would not have found you otherwise.
- Is the operational cost worth it? Customer service queues, photo uploads, listing maintenance, dispute handling — all real, all silent.
Most operators we know in 2026 settle into a mix of one or two OTAs plus a direct channel that includes a Wallet-based capture layer at the meeting point. That mix tends to be sustainable across seasons, because no single channel can change its terms and sink the business.
The seasonal review worth blocking on the calendar
Block ninety minutes at the start and end of each season. Look at:
- Revenue and commission paid per channel, in absolute euros.
- Change in repeat-customer share.
- Anything that broke or surprised you (a delisting, a policy change, a notable spike).
The operators who run this review consistently tend to be the ones who feel calm, not cornered, the next time an OTA policy email lands. They have already thought about it.
Where Tourist Scan fits
Tourist Scan is not an alternative to your OTA listing. It complements it. When a traveller you acquired through an OTA arrives at your meeting point, Tourist Scan is how you politely, ethically introduce them to your direct channel — without asking for an email, without breaking parity, without disrespecting the OTA. See how it works on the home page.